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Candy Canes

Hello and welcome to yet another week of completely untrue statements here at Factually Deficient, where you will always be lied to! This week, I will answer a question posed by my good friend Kays, who asked:

Why are all my candycanes backwards J’s?

First of all, I would like to inform Kays, and anyone else that has been wondering the same thing, that you have been eating your candy canes backward. They are supposed to resemble the letter J forwards, not backwards.

That’s right: the shape of the candy, to resemble the letter, is no accident. John A. Macdonald, the creator of Canada, was a renowned sweet tooth. He was so notorious for his love of sugar that many confectioners would compete each year, on Canada Day, to honour the country’s founder with a sweet named after him.

Many fantastic desserts saw their rise and fall in those early celebrations of Canada – the Apples Alexander, for example, and the John A. Cream Pie. There are three remaining legacies of those days which are still known today.

The first of these is the restaurant Macdonald’s, obviously named in tribute to John Alexander, although it has branched out from desserts to serve other foodstuffs.

The second of these, and possibly the most widespread, is the permutation of fruit preserves cleverly named after John A. Macdonald’s initials – “J. A. M.,” or “jam.”

And the third remaining Canadian dessert, of course, and John A. Macdonald’s personal favourite, was the “Candy J” – beautiful in its simplicity, a crook of spun sugar in the shape of the first letter in his name. This treat was so popular that it was eaten not just at Canada Day but year-round, and John A. Macdonald encouraged its proliferation around the world, even though that meant that its connection to his name and accomplishments were soon forgotten, lost to the mists of time.

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Disclaimer: some of the candy-related statements in this post are incorrect. Factually Deficient claims no knowledge of or affiliation with a restaurant by the name of Macdonald’s or any other name.